"Just before leaving, I had a brief but kind of strange conversation with Bruce Andrews.I hadn't seen him in a while, not since the Coolidge/Gizzi reading, where I had given him--Bruce--a copy of my comic.Bruce congratulated me on the comic, said that while he hadn't read it, he didn't think it was worth my having dropped out of the scene for a year to create. I reminded him that I had been "missing" really only for half a year, and he said, "even so." He said it nicely enough, so perhaps he simply meant that he missed me.But the subtext seemed to be "What you're doing isn't worth the time you're spending on it."Wasn't sure how to respond to that. I could have, I suppose, reminded him that my procedure is different from his own, that drawing comics physically takes a lot of time, and that it is a learned skill--verydifferent from scribbling on 3x5s while on auto-pilot, which he's been doing for the last twenty years or so.Too, I felt like reminding him that I had already sold more copies of my little self-published comic in its first month than thatpowerhouse Sun & Moon probably sold of what'sconsidered his best book, I Don't Have Any Paper, Or Shut Up, in its first year in print. This is hubris, of course,but if sales continue as they'vebeen, I'll sell out of the first printing before a year has gone by, whereas Shut Up was published more than a decade ago, and I don't think it has yet gone into a second printing. I can't imagine that more than 1000 copies were made. I suppose I could have patiently explained all of that to him, but I was tired after a long day of working. Plus, it seemed more intended as a kind of conversation stopper, not starter.His comment--and he's famous for these kinds of comments--shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. As a personal slight, sure, but more as a kind of reminder of the worst aspects of the poetry scene, of why it can sometimes seem a monumental waste of one's energy and resources to engage with it. If one's interaction with the poetry scene leads to these kinds of banal but hurtful conversations, why would anyone in their right mind steal time away from their creative endeavors to be available for them? Of course, I'm overreacting. (I'm a Leo; we do that.) The truth is, I had a great time with everyone else, picked up some wonderful-looking books,and look forward to the next event, which is tonight, I realize:The Hanging Loose book party at Teachers & Writers. New books by Sharon Mesmer and Jeni Olin! I guess I have to go to the ATM."

Thursday, June 2

Radical Druid Asks:

1. Do you write with the intent of submitting (and getting published)? Is that your primary objective in writing poetry (publishing to print media, or online journals, or other outlets [i.e., contests, prizes, etc.])?

I fell in love wtih the printed page at an early age. So Ialways wanted to see my writing in print and be a partof the vast libraries of books I loved so much as a child.My earliest poems were imitations of my favorite poets:A.E. Housmnan and Thomas Gray, poets I read in the high school anthology. Though I heard e.e.cummings and Lewis Warsh read in college in NY in the early 60's, I didn't discover many of my favorite contemporaries until the middle to late 60's and on to the 70's. Meanwhile, I had strongly pulled away from trying to publish, when certain late 60's anti-ego values became attractive to me. At this point, my social concerns and anti-war activities, and a concommitant quest for answers to personal concerns submerged aesthetic concerns in favor of wanting and needing to understand things-to answer life's questions. Jackson Mac Low's poetry became an inspiration and challenge, as did the work of John Ashbery, the work and teaching of Bernadette Mayer and the work of Robert Smithson and Vito Acconci. It wasn't until I began to give readings after participating in Bernadette Mayer's workshop in the early 70's that I againstarted to get a handle on where poetry and publishing might fit into my life after my lttle bit of publishing poems in the middle 60's. I see now that my love of abstraction in poetry and art, but my simultaneous interest in psychology and philosphy just wouldn't mesh to a point that I could see a way for my many extremely varied experiments to arrive in print; though I was veryinterested in (but still shy about at first) reading them aloud when invited.The issue for me was that my poemswere meant to be stationarypoints in the frequently conflctualcurrents of experience and thought;they felt like part of a personal project that I couldn't easily frame within a public persona. While all of this was intensely problematic career wise, my relative obscurity seemed to allow an internal fanning of the flame of my poeticconcerns and interests, in the same way that my avoidance of academic employment helped me toremain enthusiastic about literature in general, or so it seemed. I guess I really didn't want to professionalize my writing interests. Eventually,after discovering some ideas in the work of Paul Valery,working with poetics offered amethod for dealing with suchconcerns that paralleled myuse of psychoanalysis in working with my personalissues and those of others- an approach that seemed moreconstructive to me; these weremodes of connecting my experiences and activitieswith others that still allowedmy poetic process to remainsomewhat private,. Presenting my writing to others has consistently created personal challenges for me, even at times seemingly insurmountable challenges and conflcts in terms of my inner concerns with the issues in the work itself. I never liked the emotionally cumbersome process of arranging and submitting my work for publcation, though I certainly enjoyed and benefitted fromseeing my works in print when they were published and having them available in an attractive and convenient way to readers. As I've said countless times now, and never seem to tire ofsaying, weblogging and the web in general have, for the first time, made available some of the rapidity and availability of interaction and response, combined with the "automatic" archiving andrecord-keeping, that I've alwayslonged for. One of my collages in the 80's was titled *Distribution Automatique.* The other part of the publishing/criticalreviewing system I didn't appreciate was the academicism, a quality in intellectual life I have had a problem with since my honors courses in college. I'm uncomfortable with pretentiousness and afraid and worried about seeingit increase in myself; thoughI cerainly enjoy the satisfactions and pleasures of eperiencing my own and others' successes in doing artistic work

Wednesday, June 1

Tuesday, May 31

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

Listening to Sibelius, as played by Maxim Vengerov,a little enervated afterdinner, and a long train ride home after a holidayweekend out of town, readingBoynton (Melbourne) opening themail, mostly damn bills,reading the email, welcome words from friends,readingNever Neutral (Mexico City)

One thing about visiting my in-laws in Arlington is the shopping,and, in particular-used book shopping- more on this later (now the books are in the suitcases, we're leaving shortly)but one amazing book we found was Chaucer's *House of Fame*,a late 19th century copy in the old English. Fascinating stuff(hadn't even heard of this work before, though McIntyre and Moore,the great scholarly used bookstore in Somerville, had tonsof books about it; the poem has a lot of material about dreams)and I can't wait to read it and learn more about it. Another bookfound in McIntyre and Moore, not purchased but examined ledto a fact that was interesting, though perhsps not that surprising-the Routledge Press (published in 2000) *Who's Who in 20th Century World Poetry*edited by Marc Willhardt with Alan Michael Parker, has a lengthy entry on Charles Bernstein; the book, covering everycountry in the world for the whole century, has only 900 entries sentin by 75 contributors!

It's such a pleasure browsing other people's bookshelves,don't you agree? Visiting in-laws in Arlington, Mass, we longago noticed their petit collection of charming antique books, including a complete 19th Century edition of Addison & Steele's18th Century version of blogging, *The Spectator*. Havingnearly finished a cup of double-strength coffee, we wanderedover to our sister-in-law's I-book. And to our endless joy wewere charmed to start the morning reading Nada Gordon's entertaining answers to Professor Mayhew's most stimulatingquestions to bloggers. Full disclosure: these days, Nada Gordon {click here}our #1 favorite poet. Nada's response includes a quote from a seriesof hilarious questions put to her by the then ardently courting Gary Sullivanin Swoon {click here}